The verdict: Not guilty

The prosecutor will be given a chance to lay out the arguments and evidence proving that IncognitoGuy abused his power as Vice President. The defense will then be given a chance to argue the points set forth by the prosecutor. After all the evidence is set forth, the prosecutor and the defense will each make their closing arguments. Congress will then review the evidence, and confer on a separate image to be provided, and after such, will return here to make the final vote. 2/3 majority required to convict Vice President IncognitoGuy of abuse of power and remove him from office. This image will then be made available to the general public and the verdict will be carried out.

For reference, I believe this trial meme was featured at about 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. CST on Friday, can’t remember exactly when.

I proposed a 48-hour timeframe for this trial, but it’s your call.

Have your arguments been sufficiently presented?

Yep. I’m done.

ok

When will I be able to argue back?

Uhh,right now

ok great

His trial, his rules, but in my opinion you have the opportunity to respond at any time — I won’t object.

Have your arguments been sufficiently presented?

They were at first but then sloth made another argument so I responded to that. Assuming that sloth is finished, then I am too. But if he comes up with anything else then I'd like to respond.

He says he's done

Can I have a list of the congressmen please?

BeHapp
Hermit_Craftin
The_Right-Minded_Knight
Napoleon.
Wubbzymon
AntiAnimeAssociationChief
Firestar9990
SydneyB
Buck_Fou_Yiden
Via_Getty
Fak_u_lol
Crazyscientistfarmer
Birb_Likes_Crumbs
McKennzo
TravicePettipiece

I'm gonna need a link for that last one, can't find him

Sorry I spelt it wrong. He's actually called TravisPettipiece.

https://imgflip.com/user/TravisPettipiece

Thanks

Hello

I Want Evidence For This Abuse Of Power So I Can Decide Please Any Links?

I have decided to vote to convict IG

1. Mod Abuse

Incognito Guy had deleted comments that had represent pro-gay and memes that were pro-gay. IG deleted these comments because he thought they were “inappropriate.” They weren’t graphic or explicit.

The "Anti-LGBTQ” law is no longer in effect so he has no explicit authority to do this.

IG deleted these comments and that leads to Censorship. No one wants Censorship. We are supposed to be a democracy. Not a dictatorship

Thank you for explaining why you voted how you did, it's rare that anyone in this congress does

You're welcome. Let me continue on the other parts

Your comments on this are quite detailed — it’s evident you followed the evidence closely and gave it due consideration. Thanks.

You're welcome. I feel like I was the only one to impeach incognito guy.

IG's defense can be stated below this comment.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I was recently getting on ok with sloth. But one day he asked me to stop moderating content that is irrelevant and inappropriate. I refused, and he got mad and threatened to impeach me. I still refused to be blackmailed, so now here we are.

sloth proposed some rules for the trial. He said that tampering with any evidence should be considered an obstruction of justice. I have followed the rules and haven't deleted any of my content that relate to the trial. But sloth broke his own rules by deleting some incriminating memechat messages to cover his tracks.

sloth has accused me of election rigging. His reason? Because there are gay people running in the election, and since some of the content I moderated was LGBT related that somehow automatically means that I'm discriminating against them (which is nonsense). His charges are bogus.

He also accused me of unfair censorship, but all I've done is moderate content that's NSFW, inappropriate or irrelevant to the stream.

He has also tried to impeach me for posting a joke meme that said "god hated f*gs". But he hasn't said anything about mineturtle saying "ni**er" or Captain_Scar threatening to be a dictator. He got those jokes perfectly fine. But not mine? Almost as if he's being biased.

His final charge is that I...threatened to fire him? Firstly, I never fired him or even tried to. Secondly, sloth resigned anyway. Thirdly, he betrayed me and the government so it makes sense why I was unhappy with him still being in the Cabinet. And lastly, if sloth considers what I said a threat then some of the stuff he's said to me like threatening to impeach and accuse me of obstruction of justice should also count as threats?

I offered to compromise and apologise, but sloth refused and continued to try impeaching me. This proves that he's not interested in actually seeking justice and only wants to remove me from office because he's out to get me after developing a grudge against me a few days ago.

sloth has censored people for having an opinion in PoliticsTOO and was impeached here for blackmail. And this sudden betrayal he's done proves he can't be trusted.

Mineturtle is not on trial here. Mineturtle’s “joke” was in poor taste, and rightly unfeatured, but he’s not a mod here. One or two off-color jokes isn’t a basis for trial. Are we gonna put everyone on trial who’s had a meme unfeatured or comment deleted? No.

So, if your “God hates f*gs” joke(?) was the only thing you’ve done wrong, we wouldn’t be here. In conjunction with everything else, including the mod abuse, however, it’s a problem.

Captain_Scar has never improperly censored anyone, to my knowledge. That’s the joke: he’s not actually a Big Brother.

You though? Actual homophobe. A lot of truth is revealed in jest!

In addition, sloth has been dragging out this impeachment for a while now and has even admitted that I likely won't be impeached, so it's likely he's just doing this to help his election chances.

I’ve been ready for trial for a week. The reasons for the delay were making sure everyone agreed on trial rules and that you and your attorney (who quit, so you got the option to self-represent) were ready for trial.

By your own agreement, we set the trial for this Friday. I was happy to do that as a courtesy to you to make sure this process didn’t interfere with the RUP primaries. Anyone who’s followed this process knows I’ve been doing it by the book. We’re not doing fly-by-night justice here.

I’m doing this to ensure my LGBTQ running-mates can post about who they are and speak freely. You can cynically call that “helping my election chances,” but you’d be wrong. Some won’t vote for our ticket because we pursued impeachment. It’s still the right thing to do.

One day you posted an image or two saying you didn't plan on doing anything impeachment-related at all.

It could have, no should have, been at least a week earlier.

They already can. All I'm doing is marking adult content NSFW.

Last Friday — I had nothing on my schedule that day, was just waiting for RUP’s subpoena documents, the deadline for which was extended at Pr1ce’s request. Other than that, the prosecution’s investigation was complete. Every delay since then was caused by scheduling logistics and agreeing upon trial rules.

I vote don't, he may hv learned his lesson

IG has never learned his lesson he's remained the same throughout his time on Imgflip.

Thanks Birb!

I can guarantee you IG hasn’t learned his lesson, and will learn exactly the opposite lesson from this unless he faces a real punishment.

(Not asking you to change your vote, but since IG is talking to jurors after they have cast their votes, it’s only fair I get to as well.)

2. Homophobia.

Calling someone gay is considered to be rude because it can hurt someone's feelings even if they're straight

He might Be anti-gay but he should just let people be people no matter what they're background is.

People are allowed to choose to be gay or not.

This is all I have to say on this one because I don't want to get called out on this because I may be Conservative and Homophobic but I don't want to get involved with LGBTQ.

nay

Thanks, Fak_u_lol!

Nay

PROSECUTION’S OPENING STATEMENT:

Impeachment is serious business and isn’t to be pursued lightly. Even on a meme site, it’s stressful for everyone involved. Why are we here?

PRESIDENTS aims to be a roleplay government that’s open to *everyone* on Imgflip. The Imgflip community is incredibly diverse in politics and background. Some streams are explicitly pro-liberal (or pro-conservative). Not here on PRESIDENTS — we have liberals and conservatives and libertarians. This leads to conflict and drama, but a certain amount of conflict is productive and even healthy. These are all unavoidable features of politics.

A line is crossed however, when certain viewpoints and people are improperly shut down. That is what the evidence in this trial will show is happening here under IncognitoGuy’s modding. Benign pro-LGBTQ content like gay pride flags and references to sexuality are being marked NSFW and other pro-gay comments have been simply censored or deleted.

So to be clear: This is not primarily a case about IncognitoGuy’s harsh statements about LGBTQ (which are protected, up to a point, by the principles of free speech), but rather, about his being unable to separate that bias from his modding. He is thereby impairing others’ free speech. Many of us who are LGBTQ or allies have tried to reason with IG on this point in an effort to avoid having to impeach him, but IG ultimately offered to do nothing but apologize without any commitment to changing. I offered to halt the trial process several times if he’d just mod properly going forward; he refused.

Hence, ABUSE OF MOD (CENSORSHIP) is the first count.

But why not simply allow the October election to play out? Why do we need to pursue impeachment *now*?

I would agree that governments should be allowed to govern, generally — but they also must not interfere with the election process. There are LGBTQ memers running in the October election and their content is at great risk of being modded or improperly throttled with NSFW flags if IG remains. Two LGBTQ memers are my running mates. Hence, we can’t wait — in order to secure a fair election, we must pursue IG’s impeachment now.

I have set forth 4 additional counts (homophobia, retaliation, obstruction of justice, election rigging) on which the jury may convict IG, but the #1 count I would ask the jurors to consider is the unjustified censorship and mod abuse.

To the jurors: Thank you for being a part of Imgflip’s government, and for your time and consideration.

Did you mean sugas and Jemy? Or me and sugas? Bc I’m lgbtq kind of

Ah, I didn’t know that. I know SuGaS is lesbian and Jemy is bi.

I mean, I'm sort of like if you bought the platinum deal for straight (i like girls and nonbinary people)

(Forgive me Scar) SpicyStraight™

Bruh it's trademarked

Lol

MOD ABUSE:

I’ve posted as a trial exhibit a portion of IG’s comment deletion logs. I will stipulate that these deleted comments represent pro-gay comments and memes that IG deleted as “inappropriate.” They weren’t graphic or explicit.

The “anti-LGBTQ” law is no longer in effect, so he has no explicit authority to do this.

As a matter of fact: I actually defended IG when there was an incident over his modding of LGBTQ content last term — he was demodded for discriminating and failing to follow his own anti-LGBTQ law with respect to his own content. I thought it was likely an honest mistake and that he ought not to be demodded except through an impeachment trial; I also thought it could be worked out. So, we came up with a compromise solution: IG’s modship was restored, and then-President at the time Wubbzymon vetoed the anti-LGBTQ law. This put the controversy to bed, or so I’d hoped.

Well, we now know IG didn’t change his ways even after all this, and basically proceeded to mod as if the anti-LGBTQ law were still in effect.

And now we are here at an impeachment trial over these same issues. All because IG refused several times to simply re-implement the same compromise that ended the controversy last time.

Tiresome! And, more of the point, mod abuse.

In support of the count of Mod Abuse, I call SuGaS to the stand for one more question which we didn’t cover in her deposition. SuGaS: do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I swear.

Ah sh*t, here we go again.

Have you ever self-censored: that is, have you ever chosen not to post a pro-LGBTQ meme or template to PRESIDENTS stream because you feared it would be censored or improperly marked NSFW?

Yes. I had to make a second announcement template so that if I used my first template (which features pride flags, and references to my romantic orientation), it would be marked Not-Safe-For-Work. I decided to use my second ones in this stream, so I don't give the accused more things to abuse his power with.

Thank you. Nothing further.

ELECTION RIGGING:

This is a late-breaking story from just this week. I’ve seen no official announcement about the winner of the RUP primaries or the vote totals, but it’s clear IG won and it wasn’t even close.

Pr1ce is a sitting President with high approvals, while Wubbzy is a former two-term President whom many consider the greatest of all time. Pr1ce got not a single vote by my count, while Wubbzy got very few.

The RUP Presidential primaries were obviously quite skewed in IG’s favor. It appears that IG alone controlled the eligible voter list. IG organized these primaries and there was hardly any campaigning about them. Pr1ce claims he was never told IG would be running. All of this stands in stark contrast to the RUP HOC primaries last term which were very popular, well-advertised, and interesting in terms of the campaigning.

These corrupt presidential primaries were an obvious self-coup by IG to install himself as the leader of RUP over two Presidents who were very well-liked. This seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and many RUP members left the Party thereafter.

With the latest draft RUP Constitution, IG has attempted to further restrict voting rights in the general election as well in a way that was very poorly received by PRESIDENTS stream members.

If you agree these IG-organized RUP Primaries were sketchy AF, and that IG’s leadership poses a threat to voting rights in the general election as well, then you may convict IG for election-rigging.

The list of eligible voters was made in a painstakingly long process where I researched every active user who had expressed interest in voting RUP and had not voted against us in the previous election or campaigned against us.

I posted the list on the RUP stream and no one protested it. Everyone seemed quite satisfied with the list actually.

There were plenty of campaign ads as well. Not sure why everyone keeps repeating this falsity. Also I fail to see how your opinion of how interesting each primary election was has anything to do with this trial whatsoever.

These primaries were not corrupt at all. I was initially going to remain PR1CE's running-mate, but after Wubbzy unexpectedly entered the race that shook things up and I saw a major opening.

That is a blatant lie. I did not try to restrict voting rights at all. The only ones who didn't like the Constitution are users who constantly oppose myself and the RUP in everything we do anyway so it's hardly a surprise that the anti-RUP crowd had this irrational hatred of our latest Constitution draft.

And what's AndrewFinlayson got to do with anything?

OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE:

RUP was asked by me to provide evidence of their own for this impeachment trial. Then-Owner Envoy agreed they would be required to do so.

A few days after the impeachment process began, I issued a subpoena which gave RUP 3 days to provide IG’s mod logs and statements of his on PRESIDENTS referencing LGBTQ. The night before the deadline when it became clear they weren’t prepared to answer, they freaked out, and at their request, I extended the deadline and allowed RUP to choose its own deadline for when to answer. They requested an additional 2.5 days. RUP then failed to answer again, even by their own self-imposed deadline.

See: imgflip.com/i/5onxy9

RUP was placed on notice that failure to answer could result in Obstruction of Justice charges: See meme above.

Ultimately, IG’s mod logs were provided by Owner Captain_Scar — and we simply don’t have a complete picture of IG’s LGBTQ-related memes and comments for this trial, although the Community Evidence Box which myself and others gathered for this trial contains much of it.

If you find it significant that RUP blew their subpoena deadline (twice), and didn’t even try to partially answer the document requests, then regardless of any other issue in this case, you may convict IG for Obstruction of Justice.

HOMOPHOBIA:

I won’t spend too much time on this one. Homophobia is one of those “you see it or you don’t” things. If you haven’t seen IG being homophobic by now, then I’m not likely to convince you otherwise.

Some simply don’t recognize "homophobia" as a concept (likely because they don’t recognize homosexuality, period) or, like IG, they insist on redefining homophobia as “fear of gay people” contrary to the Dictionary definition which defines it as anti-gay prejudice. For purposes of this comment I won’t browbeat you with numerous examples of IG’s anti-gay bias here on PRESIDENTS, but the Community Evidence Box contains many of them.

I’ll just cite this one thread as a trial exhibit — a recent comment chain from 10/5, just this week. It's not even the worst example of IG’s homophobia, but it’s just so bizarre how he keeps causally describing political things as “gay” in a pejorative way like he was back in middle school. It's not Vice-Presidential behavior.

If you’re wondering why we’re here, it’s a good example of why: his regular insults at a huge category of people, a good chunk of Imgflip’s community, and several PRESIDENTS streamers and candidates. Whether or not that’s appropriate for any other stream, it’s not appropriate for PRESIDENTS.

(aware not exactly the point of the screenshots but thought i would chime in on that)

That is not homophobia

Just goes to show how sensitive sloth is. He calls everything he doesn’t like “homophobia” and tries impeaching his enemies for the dumbest reasons.

Firstly, that's super unrelated. Secondly, I have both Irish and Scottish ancestry myself. And thirdly, Scotland already had an independence referendum.

We’re getting into the weeds here, but the U.K.’s continued membership in the E.U. was assumed at the time the Scottish independence referendum was held in 2014. Scotland is quite pro-E.U. and Brexit has introduced a big change. That furnishes a legitimate reason to hold another independence referendum in the near future, although Scotland remains sharply divided. Northern Ireland too — Brexit has exacerbated the tensions there, no doubt. Some things the pro-Brexit camp didn’t fully think through. Any pro-Brexiteer who claims they foresaw all the political headaches Brexit has brought is probably lying.

This case is not truly about Brexit, in my view, but since it came up, some additional context.

RETALIATION:

Retaliation is defined as firing, threatening to fire, or taking any other adverse action against an employee who speaks out about an issue (such as discrimination) in the workplace. This is a meme site, but in the real world, it’s a standard protection under the law. Workers shouldn’t be punished for raising issues in their workplace. Otherwise, how would issues ever be identified and fixed?

Ultimately, I and two others in the RUP Cabinet (both LGBTQ) resigned our positions over IG's failure to address the issues of discrimination we raised.

I’m not bringing this case to vindicate myself personally. This case is primarily about the free speech rights of the LGBTQ community on this stream. However, if you believe that the attached screenshot contains evidence of an intent to retaliate, then you may convict IG on this basis.

OBJECTION

https://imgflip.com/i/5oajus#com14516900

Just wanted To point out that you resigned voluntarily.

I and two others quit the government due to an LGBTQ-hostile work environment under IG. Later, several others also quit RUP for the same or similar reasons related to what we’re talking about at this trial.

On that note, if you’d like to testify against IG for rigging the RUP primaries against you, you may — 100% your choice.

True that.

Just pointing out proofs

I was just raising a hypothetical to warn him against pressuring you — you didn’t do anything wrong here.